


Your Head Is Splitting

by compos_dementis



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Gen, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-20
Updated: 2012-10-20
Packaged: 2017-11-16 15:45:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/541147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/compos_dementis/pseuds/compos_dementis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are good days and there are bad days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Head Is Splitting

"There are good days and there are bad days," his mother says to him when he is twelve years old as she tries to explain why there is nail polish smeared on the walls again this morning, why she smells like bleach, and why she thinks it is best to let him know what she had done. At least this way, she is absolved of the gift of lying; the one her bones are too light to lift and just can't take, by bestowing Spencer with betrayal.

His mother brings him tea instead of coffee when he is sixteen, visiting for the holidays, and the vessel she brings it in is his favorite Battlestar Galactica mug instead of a cup. He asks her about her condition and she says, "There are good days and there are bad days." Her eyes are always full of positive energy and strength and good will. Spencer looks back to those days and tries to gain the strength she had in her bones from her words. He always fails.

Because now, at thirty years old, his hands shake and his head aches with skull-splitting migraines and sometimes when he opens his eyes, he can see things that he knows, rationally, cannot be there.

('Your head is splitting because it's full of ghosts.')

It started in Florida when he had been seeing symbols, and now it has progressed to faces, to whispers. They tell him it is the stress of the job. This is what happens to FBI agents, inevitably. They break from the inside out. "There will be good days and bad days," they warned him upon joining. He knew at that very point that it was going to eat his bones and spit them out once the muscle and strength from them had melted.

There have been good days and bad days, Spencer tells himself as he holds Derek's hand, waiting for the doctor to tell him, again, that his headaches and visions are psychosomatic. The doctors act as though that may save the structure that is holding him together, but it only causes him to fall apart completely.

Derek asks if he would like some water. Spencer says yes, a glass, if it would help his mind grow back and stabilize. It works for plants. It may work for him, too.

Derek looks at him, puzzled for a few seconds before asking, "You okay, pretty boy?"

"Today is a bad day." Spencer says quietly, "I can feel it in my bones."


End file.
